Urban NEXUS

Download the report here!

What is the Urban NEXUS?

The Urban NEXUS is an approach to the design of sustainable urban development solutions. The approach guides stakeholders to identify and pursue possible synergies between sectors, jurisdictions, and technical domains so as to increase institutional performance, optimize resource management, and services quality.

It counters traditional sectoral thinking, trade-offs, and divided responsibilities that often result in poorly coordinated investments, increased costs, and underutilized infrastructures and facilities. The ultimate goal of the Urban NEXUS approach is to accelerate access to services, and to increase service quality and quality of life within our planetary boundaries.

The Urban NEXUS project 2013-2014 was funded by the German Development Cooperation (GIZ on behalf of the BMZ) to develop the "Operationalization of the NEXUS approach in cities and metropolitan regions", including a baseline study (GIZ and ICLEI, 2014), identifying and documenting existing good practices (case studies), and implementing two action-oriented pilot projects supported by the German Development Cooperation.

The study builds upon established concepts and practices of integrated planning, and the Urban NEXUS Development Cycle provides a strategic design process for translating integrated policy and planning objectives into feasible projects, technical solutions, and operations.

ICLEI, as implementing partner of the Urban NEXUS project, is responsible for the content of this webpage.

Pilot projects

Stakeholder meeting and panel discussion in Nashik, India

The Urban NEXUS project included the piloting of the approach with the implementation of two projects in Nashik, India and in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. These cities took first steps in implementing an Urban NEXUS approach to finding urban solutions that integrate two or more systems, services, policy or operational “silos”, jurisdictions or social behaviors.

In the limited duration of the pilot projects, the Urban NEXUS brought together a wide range of stakeholders who had never before been sitting together at one table, thus generating new “institutional nexus”. They collaboratively designed and implemented innovative solutions and programs for optimizing water, energy and land resources in peri-urban agricultural practices (Nashik), and improving the learning environment at two municipal schools while installing integrated energy efficient technologies, rainwater catchment and vertical food production systems (Dar es Salaam) to demonstrate the benefits of Urban NEXUS thinking to local communities and government officials.

Case Studies

School children learning about the Urban NEXUS using Resource Flashcards, Kindondoni, Dar es Salaam

29 - Nagpur, India: Water sector audit - efficient use of water and energy resources in one of India’s largest metropolises

What the experts say

For this Urban NEXUS study, ICLEI wished to mobilize the insights and perspectives of experts in the field, and thus invited a range of prominent practitioners and researchers to contribute to the study with brief articles, statements or quotes.

These quotes and brief articles are referenced throughout the study report, and are available for free download here (PDF).

Jorgen Randers, Professor of climate strategy, Norwegian Business School BI; Member of the Club of Rome and Author of “2052, a global forecast of the next forty years”

Dr. Mark Roseland, founder of Pando | Sustainable Communities, Director of the Centre for Sustainable Community Development and Professor of Planning in the School of Resource & Environmental Management

Dr. Christopher Scott, Professor of Water Resources Policy, Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy and Associate Professor in the School of Geography and Development, University of Arizona